


A Brand New World Takes Shape

by merrin



Series: Scenes From the Apocalypse [2]
Category: Hockey RPF, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Confessions, Feelings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 01:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10525638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrin/pseuds/merrin
Summary: Jamie needs a new copilot and Tyler would like it to be him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to C for looking this over.

“Looks like you’ve found your new partner,” the Marshall says. It’s hard to tell when he’s pleased, his voice never sounds any more enthusiastic than when he talks about the apocalypse, or the rise of another kaiju, or the fact that it might be raining outside, but Jamie thinks he sounds at least a little smug about his matchmaking skills. 

Jamie looks up from where he’s sprawled on his back on the mat, Tyler crouched over him, staff at his neck. Jamie doesn’t even remember the move that got him here, but his staff is pointed straight at Tyler’s heart, and it must have been a tie. Again. For the fifth time in a row. Not even he and Jordie had tied that much.

Tyler looks happy, that’s easy enough to read. Jamie hasn’t known him long but he’s pretty sure Tyler doesn’t hide much. Jamie drops the staff and springs up. 

“I can’t,” he says. Another, gentler person might have looked on him with pity, but the Marshall just looks disappointed. Again. 

Jamie can’t look at Tyler as he walks away. 

\--

He grabs a sandwich off one of the cooks in the mess. He’s not interested in trying to find a seat with Tyler staring him down across the hall or Pentecost glaring at him disapprovingly. He’ll choose a new copilot when he’s ready, and he sure as hell won’t pick one that affects him the way Tyler does. 

The scaffolding around the mechanic’s bay in the dome is mostly empty this shift, just a skeleton crew making sure the fiddlier repairs and non-essential projects get worked on, and that no one makes off with anyone else’s tools. No one pays him any attention, he’s been a ghost around this bay during all of Nova’s repairs. 

He knows he has until Nova is ready again. No one thought she’d walk again at all, but the budget cuts to fund that stupid wall meant making do with what they already had. Someone else could pilot her, change her name, kill more kaiju with her. 

If he could bring himself to agree to it, that might even be best. He’s too selfish. 

He’s just about even with Nova’s nuclear heart when he finds a quiet platform and sits, legs dangling over the side. 

Nova’s quiet, the techs that have been crawling over her all day are all eating dinner, sleeping, spending time with their families. Her heart is still open though, and the glow of the reactor casts a soft white light over the bay. He makes quick work of the sandwich, hungry from the sparring earlier. In his mind, he talks to Nova and sometimes she answers. Sometimes she sounds like Jordie. 

Tonight though, she’s silent. 

\--

Tyler finds him so easily on the way back to his room that Jamie expects he must have been staking the hallway. He nods, resigned, and waves Tyler into his room. 

“Seriously, Jamie, what the fuck,” Tyler starts, pacing the length of Jamie’s room. “I know you feel this.” He gestures between the two of them. “You know we’re compatible. What the fuck.” 

Jamie drops into his chair. Tyler’s taking up enough room for the both of them at the moment. “I just. I can’t,” he says lamely, knowing it isn’t enough. 

“I’ve never been anyone’s first choice,” Tyler says, his voice thick with forced casualness that makes Jamie ache. “It’s not just you, you know.” 

Jamie thought back to the stories Tyler had told him about his old dome, getting replaced in the copilot’s seat by someone who was supposed to be a better fit. 

“It’s not that,” Jamie says. He’s never been good with words, but it’s suddenly important that Tyler understand this. “It’s anyone. I know I need a copilot but it’s like... letting someone in my head again is just.” His hands make shapes in front of him, like he would draw the words if he could. “You know?” he tries, but it’s clear that Tyler doesn’t. 

“Fuck, dude. Use your words.” 

Jamie turns away. If he’s going to do this he can’t look at Tyler while he does. “Did you know Jordie died?” He can tell by the soft noise Tyler makes that he didn’t. “Kind of. I mean, he’s fine now, sort of. He’s got a farm up in the mountains. There are goats. 

"But he died. While we were in the drift. Before that, he lost consciousness. It was like . . . I was awake and asleep at the same time. And he was fighting it the whole time, you know. In his head. Fighting me, Nova, the drift. It might have been easier if it had just been ripped away entirely, if the drift had broken instead, but I was fighting the jaeger and Jordie’s leg and his goddamn subconscious all the way back to shore. He couldn’t control anything. It was-” 

Jamie stops. He doesn’t want to say the next part out loud.

“What?” Tyler prompts, his voice barely a breath of sound Jamie can hear over the air vents. 

Jamie’s only ever said this part out loud once, and he still isn’t sure that he actually said it, he’d been so delirious by then. “It was almost a relief when he died,” Jamie finally says, like he’d said to Nova. He’d like to think she understood better than anyone else would. She was the only other person who’d been there. “When he stopped fighting me, stopped fighting Nova. He was dead for less than a minute, I’d already gotten us here and I just didn’t know it. They got us out of the rig and got him going again. But that’s what I thought, in the instant that it happened: what a relief.” 

He looks down at his hands. “What a monster I am.” 

“That’s fucking stupid,” Tyler says, and Jamie almost falls off his chair. 

He stands instead and heads to the door, whether to force Tyler out or leave himself, he’s not sure, but Tyler’s in his way, hands strong on Jamie’s shoulders to stop him. “You’re punishing yourself.” 

Jamie looks at Tyler now, now that he’s said the worst thing, the final thing. But the look on Tyler’s face isn’t what Jamie had expected. “What?”

“You. You think you’re a monster, that you don’t deserve this. A new pilot, the missions, Nova. You think you deserve to live out your days one step away from what you actually want, holding on to that phantom ache in your knee as some form of penance.” 

“No, I-”

“Shut up, you don’t get to do that anymore. I won’t let you.” 

“You won’t let-”

“No.” Tyler pushes in closer, getting in his face in a way no one has since the battle, in away he hadn’t realized he’d missed. “I won’t let you do this anymore. That’s your dark secret? That you walked through a hellscape of your brother’s imagining and were relieved when it ended? And I’m supposed to what, be disgusted by this? Run away? Agree that you’re the scum of the earth?”

“I guess not.” 

“No,” Tyler says. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m your new copilot, and tomorrow after you’ve slept on it and gotten yourself used to the idea, we’re going to tell Pentecost. We’re going to drift, and we’re going to be the best fucking team on this coast.”

Jamie isn’t sure if that requires an answer, but he nods anyway just in case. Tyler holds him there a minute longer, just two dudes breathing on each other in the bowels of the Shatterdome, but Jamie knows it’s more than that. It’s weird but in a way, it’s just Tyler. Jamie doesn’t pull away. 

Tyler does, eventually. He stops at the door. “You’re gonna have to work a lot harder to make me run away.” 

“I don’t want-” 

“Of course you don’t,” he says. “I’m amazing.” 

Jamie is forced to concede, as Tyler shuts the door behind him, that he’s probably right.


End file.
